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We've got mites!!!

W

wholovessnakes

New member
Dangit! At least that's what I'm thinking I saw. My little Spike who I've had a few weeks now was eating tonight and I noticed what appeared to be a black pinhead sized bug on him. :( Of course, while he is eating I'm trying to get the bug off him. So, I'm off to figure out how to rectify this situation. Aaaarrhhhhggggg! I was hoping we were in the clear since this is the first time I've seen anything and we've had him about 6 weeks now and he shed last week. Any tips, suggestions, or advice is appreciated. Or, feel free just to commiserate......
 
Now I'm getting more and more pissed off. Petco SUCKS! I can't believe this. I just fed him, seriously, 10 minutes ago, and don't want to move him around and risk a regurge. What do I do? It's 8:30 at night here, my kids are in bed, going to the store is not an option tonight, but will send my husband in the morning. I'm also worried about how little he is and treating him. So. upset. not. even. funny. My little guy isn't going to die or anything, is he? We lost our baby garter snake (again, Petco- will NEVER go back there again!) back in June and now this. Please tell me he'll be ok. My kids (twin 3 year olds and a 7 year old) will be devastated if something happens to him.
 
Well, I spoke with Kathy Love (thank you for taking my call, you are an absolute sweetheart!) and she advised me not to wait to clean out his cage just because he ate in the last hour and that if he's going to regurge, it's better to do it right away than later. I put him in some water, he did NOT like that, and started thrashing around quite a bit, so I moved him into a dry rubbermaid container. I cleaned out the cage, top to bottom, dried it all out, and put papertowel in the bottom. I saw a couple of bugs on his hollow wood and another bug that I'm not sure what it was, maybe a baby mite or larvae or something (I have REALLY good eyesight) and the wood and tree is in a bucket of diluted bleach. I put down paper towel and just his water bowl and put him back in. I will get either Nix or Provent-a-mite, or something like that tomorrow and I'll wait a couple days for him to digest and then I will go to town all over again with a treatment. He seems healthy, has been active, and eats very well, so I am hoping he'll be fine.

Thanks again, Kathy!
 
First off, I'm just asking, but what did Petco do exactly that caused you to lose a garter snake and get your corn snake mites?

He also needs to have some sort of hide in his cage along with his water bowl or else he'll be extremely stressed. Why would you put him into a bowl of water in the first place?

You said he is small...do you know how long he is or how much he weighs? Baby corn snakes are really quite small.
 
Mites can come from different sources. Bedding, taking them outside ect... 1 mite wont kill a snake overnight. But you should get some mite killer, change the bedding ect.. Do your best to get rid of them. Think of them like fleas for your snakes. A dog can live with fleas but it is uncomfortable and not healthy by any means....
Another thing, RELAX, things happen. It is how we react to things that can make a situation worse, or better.

QUEEZTACOATL
Putting them in water actually will drown many of the mites. Adding a liquid soap(very little) will actually help reduce air bubbles which the mites can use to survive during the bath. This is one way to help reduce the amount of mites on the snake. This is not a cure all to the problem.
 
Quetzacoatl-my experience with the chains is that they do A LOT of things that can affect your snake's health. I won't buy from them again.
1. They put lots of baby snakes in the same enclosure
2. They offer them for sale the minute they get them with no quarantine or time to destress
3. They feed them as a group (this is in the stores I've been in)
4. They don't clean the cage between new shipments
5. They combine snakes from shipments (snake 1 arrived last week and is still in there so they throw in snakes 2-5).
6. They will put the babies in the same cages they had other species in the week before (like kingsnakes) -imagine THAT stress
7. I've seen them put baby snakes in cages that, the day before, contained anoles/geckos. These are usually wild caught and probably have mites and other parasites.

These are just the things I've noticed with my local PetCo and PetSmart.
 
to rectify it i would suggest getting a can of provent a mite for down the road to use on bedding. then now i would suggest getting the mite oil that i dont know the exact name of right now as im at my brothers and cant go look on my shelf to see. i use it cause it kills the mites and eggs, and also isnt bad for your snake either. also search nix treatment as that works very well too for the problem. hope you get it gone soon.
 
I put him in a bowl of water per Kathy's recommendation that the mites would drown, except for on his head. No such luck though. He's fine right now with his papertowel and I put in a little hide for him as well.

As to how the garter snake died/may have given Spike mites- it's a long story but short version is: Got garter snake, garter snake seemed sick, took back to Petco, said they would send to vet, vet said he may have a skin infection but would get better, snake died, if hubby did not clean cage thoroughly after garter snake, bought Spike, mites still could be in cage. OR, he had mites when I got him. We've never taken him outside or anything and we have no other reptiles. Either way, he ate yesterday so the cage is cleaning and he is resting. Tomorrow, I will pick up the provent-a-mite stuff and will clean everything again.

I'm not sure how big he is but I would say, if guessing, about 14-17 inches, about as thick around as a pinkie. He's grown in the past 6 weeks-have him on large pinkies on the munson plan.

Thank you for all the kind thoughts!
 
my corn has recently had mites that she got from stayin for a week at the petstore whilei was away and i bought this spray named "mite off" u use it every three days and i used it for about 4 sprays and now the mites are gone and she back to her normal self :)
 
Guys, water treatments and silly little bottles of "mite off" are all very good and well to temporarily relieve the snake of the annoying pests, HOWEVER mites are extremely resilient creatures who move and breed at an alarming rate. You may remove the adult mites which are on the snake at the time with the above mentioned treatments, but as soon as you put them back into their enclosure with eggs galore the whole cycle starts again.

Mites are a serious pest and MUST be eradicated in the most severe manner possible within captive collections. I cannot stress enough how much stress and grief they have caused me, and they could have possibly infected my ENTIRE collection with IBD due to how quickly they breed and spread from snake to snake. They are a vector in spreading all manners of reptile diseases and viruses... I use Front Line (flea and tick spray for cats and dogs) on the snakes and Proventamite in their cages. I soak ALL viv furnishings and plants in bleach, then spray with F10 and finally spray with proventamite. During a mite infestation I would advise you leave all hides and plants etc out of vivs. Instead opt for clean white kitchen towel layers the infested snake can bury or hide in, just long enough for the mites to die off. This makes it easy to see live and dead mites and gives the eggs little chance of survival if you are replacing the kitchen towel every day. I would also advise on washing and hovering all carpets as mites travel a long long way to find their next host. And in that time they will be breeding and laying eggs in your carpets. The next time you have a mite infestation try putting some double sided selotape on your carpets surrounding vivs and see just how many mites will be stuck on it in the morning!
 
Tula_Montage said:
Guys, water treatments and silly little bottles of "mite off" are all very good and well to temporarily relieve the snake of the annoying pests, HOWEVER mites are extremely resilient creatures who move and breed at an alarming rate. You may remove the adult mites which are on the snake at the time with the above mentioned treatments, but as soon as you put them back into their enclosure with eggs galore the whole cycle starts again.

Mites are a serious pest and MUST be eradicated in the most severe manner possible within captive collections. I cannot stress enough how much stress and grief they have caused me, and they could have possibly infected my ENTIRE collection with IBD due to how quickly they breed and spread from snake to snake. They are a vector in spreading all manners of reptile diseases and viruses... I use Front Line (flea and tick spray for cats and dogs) on the snakes and Proventamite in their cages. I soak ALL viv furnishings and plants in bleach, then spray with F10 and finally spray with proventamite. During a mite infestation I would advise you leave all hides and plants etc out of vivs. Instead opt for clean white kitchen towel layers the infested snake can bury or hide in, just long enough for the mites to die off. This makes it easy to see live and dead mites and gives the eggs little chance of survival if you are replacing the kitchen towel every day. I would also advise on washing and hovering all carpets as mites travel a long long way to find their next host. And in that time they will be breeding and laying eggs in your carpets. The next time you have a mite infestation try putting some double sided selotape on your carpets surrounding vivs and see just how many mites will be stuck on it in the morning!
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Great post Elle.(I'm out of rep-power!)
 
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